


rise up with the dew

by lickrish



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Domestic, Longing, M/M, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:13:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24646975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lickrish/pseuds/lickrish
Summary: Will learns to relax. Hannibal yearns.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 37
Kudos: 367





	rise up with the dew

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to my long-suffering fiancée for beta-reading, and to my good pal c for their enthusiasm.
> 
> title from 'spell' by nick cave and the bad seeds. cheers, nick!

It was almost springtime in the place where the dead men Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham made their home.

The memory of exactly how they came to take possession of the property a few months ago was less clear than Hannibal would have liked; a blur of effort and pain and the last of the morphine. It unsettled Hannibal to know how vulnerable they had been, but the vagueness of their coming allowed for a feeling of having been in this house for years already. That was an appealing idea; he and Will living their tranquil sun-drenched lives together in this house, for years.

They were slipping into new routines. Routines that did not revolve around bandages, antiseptics or injections, routines that were creative. Routines that suggested a settling, an intention to stay. The upper floor of the house was an aesthetic nightmare, last decorated several decades ago by someone with an unfortunate passion for floral motifs and patterned carpeting. Will, as soon as he could travel into town, had bought paints, scrapers, brushes – the kinds of things Hannibal did not usually trouble himself with. As he grew stronger, Will had taken to spending most of the day up there, working when he could and reading when he grew tired. Hannibal, busy stocking the pantry, would listen to Will moving about above his head and feel something in his chest that, somehow, he had not been prepared for.

But sometimes, perversely, he missed the old days. He missed the tension. He missed the certainty, even the dead certainty of betrayal, the push and pull of Will’s conscience and desire. That tension had shattered on the night of their Fall, and reformed as something Hannibal could not get a grip on. The intimacy of living in this house together should have been as nothing compared to the intimacy of taking the Dragon’s life together, or even the base closeness of bandaging each other’s wounds, of helping each other bathe.

Hannibal had been profoundly aware of Will ever since they had met, and it satisfied something deep down in him to hear Will’s footsteps on the tiled floors, to breathe his scent in every room, to anticipate his wants, to know his habits. Hannibal cooked for them both, invigorated by being able to do so in a proper kitchen, with real knives. He presented Will with sticky fruit and fresh coffee in the mornings, clothes in his size from town, a fishing rod he had bargained for at market. Will allowed all of this without resistance and without comment.

Hannibal did not hide the way he looked at Will, the way he watched him. He knew that Will noticed - could no more miss it than he could do without breathing, but Will did not choose to acknowledge it. The Will Graham who had existed in life would have needled Hannibal - skewered his motives and called him _doctor_ in that particular way - and Hannibal would have relished it. This, he did not know how to interpret.

It had been a long time, and Hannibal had made of himself an entirely different , since he had been aroused by the way a person frowned over a book or how he lifted himself onto the balls of his bare feet to reach a high shelf. Will’s golden thighs flexing in the water as he swam in the pool. Will’s teeth puckering his full bottom lip as he bit it in concentration. Will did not speak much, but sometimes he would catch Hannibal looking and meet his eye for a moment before returning to whatever he was doing.

It was lucky that Hannibal had no desire to appear disinterested.

There were days, insofar as the days were ever different from each other, when all Hannibal could think of was Will Graham’s skin under his hands, Will Graham’s scent in his nose and mouth. Desire made his limbs heavy and kept him from any useful occupations. He wandered the house and garden, wanting. He wondered if Will knew the extent of what he thought about. He imagined that Will did know, and it only made Hannibal want him more.

*

Death was full of sensory experiences that Will had never appreciated in life. The house had a pool in a covered courtyard, and as soon as he was well enough Will had begun swimming every morning. The heat here reminded him of his childhood in Georgia. The cool water was sweet on his skin as he kicked off. He was getting stronger every day, he could feel it. He reveled in the tension and release of muscles, the way it felt to let his body propel him through the water. He turned onto his back and floated, luxuriating. Since coming to this place every day had been like a vacation, the kind Will had never taken, the kind he would never have been able to enjoy if he had. He felt cocooned and protected and safe. He floated, thinking of nothing much beyond the way the movement of the water tugged at his hair.

*

It was mid-April and the promise of summer heat rolled over the house. It was nine o’clock in the morning, and Hannibal was making Will breakfast. The food - eggs, fried until curled at the edges and scattered over with cracked black pepper and rough salt, bread toasted in a heavy pan, sweet melon sliced thin - all came from the market. One day, perhaps, Hannibal might be able to really cook for Will again. For now he could have this, and it gave him great satisfaction to put everything in its place on the tray and carry it out to the courtyard.

He had timed it perfectly. Will was just emerging from the pool. Hannibal set out the plates on the little stone table with a deft hand, and took the opportunity to look at him. Will was pale gold all over and in spite of his years he looked like the kind of youth Zeus would snatch up and take to Olympos. His swimming trunks clung, just barely, to the bones of his hips. The twin scars on his belly and his cheek were so beautiful that Hannibal’s fingers itched for a pencil. Will smiled at him and reached out a hand, and Hannibal gave him his robe from the back of the chair. Hannibal gestured for Will to sit, which he did, leaving the robe open over his chest. He smelled of chlorine and warm skin. He had regained muscle tone and vitality in the last few weeks, and the way he leaned back in his chair made it painfully apparent that Hannibal had never seen him truly comfortable while they were alive.

For a long time, Hannibal had been interested solely in the very opposite of comfort for Will. But he was always intrigued by the unforeseen.

They ate in silence. Hot sun, sweet fruit, bitter coffee. Will Graham’s presence like that of a contented cat. Hannibal closed his eyes for a moment and saw the warm pink of the light through his eyelids. When he opened his eyes again, there Will still was, and now he was looking at Hannibal thoughtfully.

The way Will held his coffee cup, wrapped in his hand with his index finger through the handle, was lovely. His hands were well shaped and rough with callouses. Workman’s hands. Steady. Hannibal saved them in his mind to draw later.

“You could draw me now,” said Will. It was always his tactic to cut to the meat of an interaction. That manoeuvre was a favourite of Hannibal’s too, yet it never failed to thrill him when Will did it.

“Would you mind?” Hannibal said.

A shrug. A quirk of the mouth. “I’m going to be upstairs for most of the day, but while I’m here…”

Hannibal stood and went to fetch his sketchbook. He was quick about it, in case Will changed his mind.

*****

Will felt peaceful sitting in the sun with Hannibal. Solid. Real. Never in life had sensations come to him with such simplicity. His mind was unmuddied by impressions, no longer frantic with the need to sift through and separate what was his from what was not.

The thing that remained constant from before was Hannibal’s stare. Will imagined that he could feel exactly where Hannibal was looking. _Now his eyes are on my hands, now on my face, now on the scar he made in my belly._ Hannibal did not require him to stay still, so Will just sat and drank his coffee in the filtered sun. The sensation of just sitting, calm and comfortable and unhurried, was one that he had craved before his death, and hardly ever achieved. And he had usually needed a finger or two of whiskey to help him along.

He thought about a door that needed to be re-hung. He wondered whether he should go to the pharmacy in town this week or if it could wait until next. The mundane domesticity of his concerns reminded him of the house with Molly and Walter, the family he had tried so hard to give himself up to, and it was with relief that he reminded himself that he could not hurt them anymore.

He looked at Hannibal, whose pencil moved in light, decisive strokes as he glanced between Will and the page. “Will you show me?” he asked, and watched Hannibal pretend that he might say no.

Hannibal’s face was blank. “These sketches are imprecise,” he said. His fingers flexed minutely, as if he had to stop himself from hiding his paper from view.

Will held out his hand, and Hannibal handed over the sketchbook. He took it with care, not touching any of the soft lines. Hannibal took great joy in the thick paper of this sketchbook, and in the pencil that he drew with, and the knife he used to sharpen it. His drawings of Will were scattered, unlike anything else of Hannibal’s he had ever seen. Will’s hands; on his coffee cup and reaching up to rub at the new scar on his cheek, which Will had not been aware of doing. Will’s face, caught twisting as he frowned against the sun’s brightness. There was one, too, that took Will in head to waist. Hannibal, left to himself, would probably shade him in where the shadows fell, give him the musculature of a young god and add a crown of laurels to match. At this stage, though, the drawing was just a collection of lines that fell together into a shape that suggested Will Graham. Hannibal had caught him turning his head in a way that exposed his throat, the line of which drew the eye to his clavicle and down his chest.

Will handed back the sketchbook without saying anything and without breaking eye contact. Hannibal had not looked at him with such raw vulnerability since the night he had left Will to bleed to death on his kitchen floor. Hannibal’s desire was palpable, and it felt like no one else’s. Other people’s covetousness had felt like hands holding him underwater. He glanced down at Hannibal’s hands. Broad. Strong fingers with perfectly shaped nails. Will bit his lip. “Do you still want to butcher me?” he asked.

Hannibal blinked once, and appeared to really consider it. His eyes dragged down Will’s chest. “I do not know,” he said. “If you left, I could not allow you to live.”

Will nodded and stood up. He was heated through and full of energy, suddenly. He needed to move. “I’ll be upstairs if you need me,” he said. Hannibal nodded absently, attention back on his sketchbook, and Will walked away across the courtyard.

*****

Practical, methodical tasks had remained constant from Will’s life into his death. He had begun to seek them out again in the last few weeks. He took comfort in tinkering. In Wolf Trap he had sat surrounded by dogs, patiently sorting through engine parts or tying flies. It had felt good - grounding - to make and fix things in a house that was his, that belonged to him and could not be taken away.

He had been thinking about getting a dog, but he was in no hurry. A dog would turn up on its own at some point, probably. The right dog. Now _that_ was a constant. He thought about Winston, how Winston had sat by him and watched him work as if learning along with him. He knew Molly would not have kept all the dogs, but maybe she would have let Winston stay with her.

Hannibal seemed to be following the house’s own aesthetic of faded rustic comfort in his few purchases so far. Will assumed, based on the interest Hannibal had taken in styling the space (and himself, and Will), that this was where they would be staying for a significant time, at least.

If Will had been serious about stopping Hannibal Lecter, he would have insisted on a more thorough investigation of his finances. Hannibal had clearly acquired the house before he had ever set eyes on Will. Will did not know what name was on the deed. He did not know where the money was coming from that had been paying for their lives here so far. He did not know when or if that money would run out.

Will’s task for the day was stripping old paper off the walls in the hall, but first he went to the room on the landing where he was keeping all the old furniture he found that he might be able to restore. There was a small table he had uncovered in the basement that was missing a leg, but he thought he could probably find another, and then he could sand down the scratches, add a coat of varnish… He wasn’t exactly sure where it would go when it was finished. Perhaps it would be a good end-table for the living room. Did Hannibal need a bedside table? It was the sort of thing Will would have chosen for himself, for the house in Wolf Trap. Simple lines, nice grain. Not showy. Built to last. Funny how objects took on new lives in different places. Funny how Will would make the same choices in a sun-trap in Cuba as he would in the wintry cosiness of Wolf Trap, Virginia. Funny how Hannibal had shrugged off all the bold signifiers of his unimpeachable eccentricity without apparent effort. Will supposed imposing dark colours and antlers and marble wouldn’t make sense in this house, just as Hannibal’s old suits didn’t make sense for a quiet ex-pat who was planting his own tomatoes.

Kneeling to examine the table, Will looked down at himself. Everything he was wearing, Hannibal had found for him. Will hadn’t questioned it. His own continuing life was so strange a thing that he did not question anything that happened in it. He had made his choice. This was the outcome. He would simply see where it went. Had he thought about it, he might have guessed that Hannibal would dress Will like a version of himself, but perhaps that desire had burnt itself out along with Will’s encephalitis. Perhaps, Hannibal’s whole outward self being a conscious construct, he did not see the value in imposing it on Will. The fabrics Hannibal had chosen for Will were all soft and cool. The trousers sat comfortably below the dip of his waist. The shirt was loose without being baggy. He was sure he had never told Hannibal anything about choosing clothes by the texture of the cloth, but there were many things he had not told Hannibal which Hannibal had made it his business to know. Will’s whole life, he sometimes felt, had been a series of attempts to read desire in objects, in the handling of objects, in the arrangement of objects. He himself had been an object of desire on many occasions, but no one’s desire for him had been so sustained and intense as Hannibal’s. Which strand of that desire was expressed in the choosing of collarless linen shirts and loose, comfortable trousers in neutral colours?

He was not worried. He got up from the floor and went out into the hall.

*

Hannibal was in a quiet ecstasy of uncertainty. He wanted to work his sketches of Will into a proper piece. He wanted to tear them out and burn them. He had wanted so much for Will to see him - to see him and to stay.

One ought to be more specific about one’s wishes.

He had never considered himself a masochist before, but before Will genuine pain - not discomfort or inconvenience - had been little more than a distant possibility. Before Will, no one had got close enough to hurt Hannibal for decades, and all Hannibal wanted was to let him do it again and again. It was exquisite agony to hold himself in place and allow Will to take his time. He was almost certain that Will was building towards something, whether he knew it or not. He was almost certain. The Will Graham that Hannibal knew could not have allowed himself even this much, and so they were well and truly in unknown territory.

His heart beat wildly. His breath came faster than usual. It was because he was still not fully recovered from his injuries. They weakened his control. He placed his palms flat on the table, on either side of his sketchbook. Looking at that helped nothing, either. He abandoned it and went to work in the kitchen.

The kitchen was the real reason he had chosen the house, years ago. It had large windows that opened all the way out, racks hanging from the ceiling for pots and pans, and an enormous wooden slab of a table right in the middle. An airy, rustic kitchen, totally unlike anything owned by Dr Hannibal Lecter of Baltimore. He had not known Will when he bought the place, but he might as well have done. This was the kind of home Will should have. He could imagine Will coming home with freshly-caught fish and gutting it, quick and keen with an old sliver of a knife, before giving it over to Hannibal.

Hannibal was still a psychiatrist, and even had he not been he could hardly have avoided noticing that he now fantasised about _Will_ feeding _him._

He went to the pantry. There was a certain loveliness in being without his old recipe cards. He had been leafing through dog eared recipe books acquired at market in odd moments, and allowing inspiration to guide him. Pastry, he thought. The process was meditative, and he would decide what to fill it with as it chilled. He took the jar of flour and paused to look around him with some satisfaction. His store was meagre yet, but he had made a good start with jars of chili jam and caramelised onions. A muslin bag containing seasoned and salted pork belly hung in a corner. By summer’s end there would be shelves of preserves and pickles, salted things and brined things, and he and Will would be nourished all winter. Next year, when they were at full strength, they would plant and sow and dig. They would construct their own ecosystem.

He thought about Will sweating in the field. Bringing him water and watching as he drank it. Watching it run down his chin and over his sunburned clavicle.

Hannibal rubbed butter into flour with his fingertips in a wide, shallow earthenware bowl. He listened to sounds of the house and gazed unseeingly out of the kitchen window. He mixed in water until the dough was cold and firm under his hands. Tomatoes, he thought, putting it in the fridge. Olive oil. Salt.

His hand was still on the fridge door when Will entered the room. Neither of them spoke. They were a constellation of two, invisibly connected, not touching. The only thing that prevented Hannibal from being blinded by Will’s light was his own brightness. Will’s sleeves were rolled up. His hands were chalky. Hannibal watched those hands as Will filled a glass with water, and did not look away when Will glanced over at him.

A tiny, tiny smile played at the corners of Will’s mouth. He still said nothing. Then he took his glass of water back upstairs - and grasped Hannibal’s upper arm (casually, briefly) as he went. He did this as if it was usual, for him. As if he did it every day.

*

Will had finished in the hall and begun stripping paper from the walls in the upper rooms. He began with the largest one - the master bedroom, he supposed. It had the best view of the courtyard, too. He sipped his water and thought for a moment about what his father might say if he had lived to see his son living in a house with a courtyard, and smiled to himself. He was just drawing open the window when he heard the slap of bare feet on tile and looked down in time to see Hannibal dive into the pool.

Will leaned his forearms on the windowsill and watched as Hannibal bobbed to the surface, hair plastered to his head and his mouth open. Then he ducked under again and began to swim. Powerful strokes. Aggressive, almost. He shouldn’t be pushing himself so hard in this heat, but Will supposed he knew that. He was good to watch, from this high. Strong and graceful. Will had thought about that grace and that strength for a long time. He had been fascinated by it, and by the way that other people didn’t know it was there.

He thought about the feeling of Hannibal’s bicep under his hand. He was just close enough to see the muscles of Hannibal’s back. Even had he not been, he knew Hannibal’s whole body now. The brand between his shoulder blades. The lean definition of his legs. He thought about calling out to Hannibal, but decided against it. He turned from the window.

Stripping wallpaper was soothing in its dullness. Will set to work with his putty knife and thought of nothing very much. It was satisfying when a big strip of the faded floral paper came off. It was already easier to picture how this room might look when it was lived in again. Probably Hannibal would move into it, unless he had some opinion about the quality of the light in one of the other rooms. Then Will would have it. Perhaps he and Hannibal would pick out paint colours and cushions and lamps together, which made him want to laugh.

He continued working. He did not tire so easily now. He liked this work. He liked the methodical stripping away of layers until he could touch the bones of the house. This, like fixing a boat engine or training a dog, was a process you had to go through step by step. He could not take a wild leap and make a sick, juddering landing at the end. It was deeply pleasurable to think about the creation of a home. That was what he had wanted for his little house in Wolf Trap. It was what he had treasured when he lived with Molly and Walter. This, or any home he had with Hannibal, would be truly his, and he would always be able to feel it.

Evening came, heralded by the buttery smell of cooking pastry and classical music from the kitchen. Will took the cue to wash his hands and change into clean clothes (midnight-blue shirt with horn buttons, soft grey jeans, no shoes) and made his way downstairs. He liked to enter the kitchen silently. He liked to see Hannibal at work when he thought he was alone. There was a contemplative feeling in the kitchen tonight. Hannibal was slicing artichoke for a salad. It was not a whole octopus, or a rare songbird, or a person, but the focus was the same. Hannibal’s eyelashes cast shadows down his cheeks. His hands were perfectly steady. Most people would not have seen the fine stiffening of his shoulders when Hannibal became aware of Will’s presence, but Will saw it. He turned and quirked an eyebrow at Will, as if to say, _well?_

Will’s mouth twitched, almost into a smile. Then he went to the fridge and helped himself to the bottle of white wine that he knew Hannibal would have put there to chill that afternoon. He poured two glasses - generous glasses. His, he kept. Hannibal’s he put in its place on the table. Hannibal wouldn’t want to be interrupted while he made up the plates. Will picked an out of the way spot at the counter and leaned there, watching as Hannibal performed his finishing touches. Hannibal no longer had the energy or the freedom to spend his days searching for a rare species of grape or constructing an elaborate centrepiece of skulls, but that didn’t mean he would serve a less than beautiful plate.

They took their places at the kitchen table. Hannibal would probably want a dining room, when upstairs was finished and they could move their bedrooms from the ground floor, but Will liked eating in the kitchen. He liked the contrast between this and their dinners when they were alive. Everything in this kitchen - in this house - was real. Hannibal, closing his eyes for his first sip of wine, was real.

Buttery pastry melted on Will’s tongue. Sharp cheese. Sweet tomato. The smell of it filled his nose as the taste filled his mouth. The wine was perfectly cold. Tender leaves curled against the smoky blue of the plate, shining with vinaigrette.

“I am thinking of beginning to grow vegetables next year,” Hannibal said abruptly, picking up his fork. “Perhaps a few fruit trees.”

“You’re thinking in the long-term,” Will said neutrally, and allowed himself a long pause. Then he said, "I’ll have to think about irrigation. What do you think we’ll grow?" just to see Hannibal pretend not to be relieved.

“It will be a long-term project, of course,” said Hannibal. “Perhaps in time we might sell some of what we grow.”

Will thought about becoming better known in town. About being talked about. _Those two guys with that villa, they_ _’re growing peaches now, maybe we should stop by._ “You don’t consider that a risk?” he said.

Hannibal shrugged elegantly. “What is life without a little risk?” he said, and glanced down at Will’s mouth.

Will could pretend to misunderstand Hannibal’s meaning, if he felt like it. He didn’t feel like it. He liked the clarity that existed between them now. The power he had over Hannibal - the power he had always had, and was finally in a position to wield - was sharp and intoxicating. He could see it so clearly. He could have Hannibal any way he wanted. And if what he wanted was to make Hannibal wait, he could do that too.

They finished eating in silence, and cleared up in silence, and retired to the living room to read in silence. Will had never been able to just _be_ with another person like this. Even with the fizz of tension between them, he and Hannibal could still be content in their own singular selves. He wondered, sometimes, what that would have been like. If Hannibal could ever have let that happen, in any iteration of their lives Before. How many other things would have had to have been different. This line of thinking was not distressing to him anymore. It used to be; he used to follow it all the way down while Molly lay asleep next to him. But he couldn’t hurt Molly anymore.

Will read. He could, if he wanted to, read with such focus that he ceased to be aware of his surroundings, but on this particular evening a part of his attention remained on Hannibal. He was just _aware_ of him, the deep stillness of his presence. Hannibal felt geological. Foundational. Hannibal was reading something in Spanish, which made him slower than usual. He read only a few pages at a time, and lost long seconds in looking at Will.

Will glanced up from under his eyelashes when Hannibal put his book aside, and watched as Hannibal reached for his sketchbook instead. There was a long moment during which neither of them moved. Hannibal’s pencil hovered over the paper. Waiting for permission. Will met his eyes directly, and shifted his pose so that he was reclining on the couch, one knee drawn up. Then he went back to his book, and read with the whisper of Hannibal’s pencil-strokes as background noise. He read until his eyelids grew heavy, and he let the book rest on his chest. He kept the pose, though.

“A moment more,” Hannibal murmured. Will drifted, and only came back to awareness when Hannibal rose, set aside his sketchbook, and said, ‘Goodnight.’ When Hannibal had left the room, Will sat up, rubbing at his eyes. He needed reading glasses, he had been putting it off for too long. He looked at the sketchbook, lying open on the arm of Hannibal’s chair. It required no particular skill to interpret that gesture, and Will did not like to waste time pretending not to know things.

He got up and held the sketchbook in the lamplight. This was not this morning’s desirous collection of lines. This was more what Will would have expected. Hannibal had drawn Will in keen, precise strokes. Instead of a couch, the Will of the drawing reclined against a tree, and instead of a shirt and trousers he was draped in flimsy cloth that flowed over his crotch but skirted the scar on his belly. Will snorted, not particularly caring whether Hannibal could hear him down the hall.

He loved the way Hannibal looked at him. He wanted Hannibal with a certainty he had not thought himself capable of. He had always been afraid of not knowing his own desires, not being able to tell what was his desire and what was his partner’s, or what was a killer’s. Hannibal, as usual, was an exception.

Since their death, Hannibal had been practically rolling over to show his belly. Will could kill him, if he still wanted to. He could do it with his hands. Intimate.

He put the sketchbook down, closed, on the arm of Hannibal’s chair, so Hannibal would know he had looked. He was tired, suddenly, and wandered down the hall to the red-tiled bathroom to get ready for bed. He had fallen into the habit of examining his face in the mirror while he brushed his teeth, trying to get used to the new scar that twisted the flesh of his cheek. It was easier than he would have thought. Men with facial scarring got a wide berth in most places, but he didn’t mind that. It seemed correct that he be marked this way. He was already lucky beyond measure to be able to look into a mirror and see only his own reflection.

Will’s room was fairly spartan, still. Wardrobe, bed, bedside table. Big east-facing window. He allowed his shirt to slip from his shoulders, let himself feel the slide of fabric down his arms. He thought about how it would feel to be watched by Hannibal as he undressed.

Will put his clothes away, the clothes Hannibal had found for him that were exactly right, and slipped, naked, between clean sheets. He must have experienced that particular sensory pleasure at some point during his life, but he could not have said when. Perhaps it was being dead. There was nothing to be worried about anymore, there were only uncomplicated pleasures like the feeling of clean sheets on clean skin and the exquisite ache of the kind of arousal that builds for hours. Will’s hips shifted, cock sliding against thin fabric. His fantasy Hannibal stood in the doorway, looking hungry. He could get off if he felt like it, but instead he just lay there. He felt as if he was floating, wrapped in good feeling, letting the arousal fizz gently through him and his thoughts land where they would. And before long, he fell asleep.

*

Hannibal, in his room at the other side of the house, bit at the flesh of his own forearm to muffle a cry as he spilled into his hand. It helped very little.

*

The days slid together into weeks and the weeks formed a summer alternately so hot and so damp that neither Will nor Hannibal cared to think beyond the bounds of their homestead. Will finished stripping walls upstairs and began to consider the flooring. He found a serviceable table leg in the half-collapsed shed at the back of the property. Nothing was urgent. Every task began at the beginning and proceeded logically until the end, and through it all he could feel Hannibal, wanting him.

He touched Hannibal when he felt like it. A hand on his shoulder when he passed behind him in the kitchen. Brushing against his arm as he reached over him for his book. Hannibal always looked as if he had been slapped. Perhaps Hannibal would enjoy being slapped. Will made a mental note to investigate that later.

It was like stepping into the pool, the utter confidence that the water would hold him. Hannibal’s wanting thrummed around him whenever they were in the same room, and it was the most natural thing in the world to reach out and run a knuckle along Hannibal’s cheekbone on leaving the breakfast table. Hannibal’s gasp had sounded like a whip-crack in the quiet kitchen, and for a moment they only looked at each other. Will knew that Hannibal was fighting the reflex to ask him questions or make an observation (“You are not usually so tactile,” he might have said, Before. “Is there something you would like to discuss?”) but instead each time he simply looked at Will, eyes serious and lips very slightly parted. He still wanted to see what Will would do.

That was alright. Will was curious himself.

Will thought that, by next year, he would probably be used to the heat. He’d been used to New Orleans. Right then, however, his healing body forced him to take it slow. In the heat of the day when it was too hot to work on anything he and Hannibal both haunted the cool lower level of the house with electric fans on high. They picked up books and discarded them again after a few pages. They dozed. They wandered the cool passageway between the living room and kitchen. They took tepid showers.

They went out occasionally, but never together. The market in town was too hectic for Will to handle more than once a week. Too many people crowded together was like sandpaper on soft skin. Death had stripped him of his protective calluses. He looked forward to when he and Hannibal could grow or catch everything themselves.

They didn’t have internet at the house, and Will hadn’t so much as glanced at a newspaper in weeks. There was a rack of English-language papers, several days out of date, at the tobacconist’s shop, and Will went the long way around so that he would not be able to look at them. Hannibal took care of all that, and Hannibal seemed to think they were safe.

Will felt safe.

Given his druthers, Will would have lived in the middle of nowhere for the rest of his life, but he supposed the FBI would have found that somewhat predictable. The house was private, with land around it, but Will would have liked it a lot further away from the town. It was better this way, he knew that, to be known well enough locally not to be a novelty when they were seen. And Hannibal liked busy places. He did not care at all for other people, but he liked the things they made and did.

Sometimes he even let people - neighbours - into the house. What was more shocking was that he asked Will’s permission before he did it. He didn’t phrase it as a request, exactly. He said, “I fell into conversation with a man at the market. He lives nearby and knows a great deal about the local soil. I have thought of inviting him here for coffee.” Then he paused to allow Will time to object.

Will, to his own surprise, did not much care. He even remained close by when the man did in fact come over for coffee. He did not join in the conversation, which took place in a stilted combination of English and Spanish, involved diagrams drawn on a hastily-torn page of notepaper, and eventually moved outside so that the two of them could scoop up handfuls of the soil to examine it. But he did come to the kitchen to refill his cup, and gave the man - Eduardo - a friendly smile and a nod. Eduardo clearly noticed the scar on Will’s face, Will saw it happen, but he was too polite to mention it. Nor did he ask how Will and Hannibal had met, or anything else that might tell him anything about the nature of their association. There were only so many assumptions a person could make about two men over the age of forty moving into a house together, and Eduardo seemed satisfied with whichever one he had chosen.

Hannibal sent Eduardo away with several jars of preserves, and Eduardo promised to return in a few weeks with a book he thought Hannibal would like. Will waved to him from the front hall, then wandered back to the kitchen, suddenly hungry.

An apple from the bowl on the counter. Cheddar cheese from the fridge. His favourite little sharp paring knife. Hannibal came in after him as he was slicing the apple. “Did you have fun with your new friend?” Will said, without turning around.

“I’m not sure what you think is so funny,” said Hannibal mildly.

Will snorted. “No?”

“No.”

Will shook his head, staring down at the chopping board and hardly seeing it.

“Do you object to my cultivating acquaintances?”

“As long as you don’t ask me to eat them, no.” Will blinked and continued slicing his apple. It was the first time either of them had brought up Hannibal’s murders since their death.

There was a helpless quality to Hannibal’s silence. He stepped forward to stand next to Will at the kitchen counter, ostensibly looking out of the window. Will saw a muscle tense in his jaw. He looked down at the knife in his hand, then at Hannibal again. He thought about what it would be like when Hannibal killed again. He would want Will to join him.

Will didn’t move particularly fast. He grabbed Hannibal’s shoulder, turned him so that the edge of the counter dug into his lower back, and put the sharp little knife to his throat. Will placed his other hand in Hannibal’s hair and _pulled._ There was a second in which neither of them moved, in which Will took in Hannibal’s open mouth and harsh breath and the way he held himself completely still. Then Hannibal let his head fall back and Will’s mouth was a breath away from the length of his throat, the line of it interrupted by his blade. Will heard Hannibal’s breath shudder. He tightened his hold on Hannibal’s hair and felt Hannibal jerk against him. He twisted Hannibal’s hair in his fist to make him meet his eyes. Hannibal was gathering breath to say something, to keep pushing as it was in his nature to push, caught between the knife at his throat and the hand in his hair. The words never came. Will drew back to look at the picture Hannibal made. The place where the knife pressed against skin made his mouth water. Hannibal’s mouth was slack, his eyes closed as if in pain. He wanted to press Hannibal back by the hips and kiss him.

The _click_ of the knife when Will put it down again was loud.

He did not wait for Hannibal to open his eyes, but turned and left the kitchen.

*

For weeks, Hannibal was sustained by the memory of Will pressing the knife to his throat. The feeling of the blade not cutting into him was among the most intense sensations he had ever experienced. Will could have killed him. It would have been exquisite.

*

For weeks, Will too drifted along, buoyed by the intensity of the experience of holding a knife to Hannibal’s throat as Hannibal’s erection pressed against his hip.

He remembered the pressure of blade on flesh and the way Hannibal’s hips had jerked, just once, before he could restrain himself.

Hannibal would have allowed it. He would have allowed anything.

Will’s whole being felt like a muscle stretched taut. It was an old feeling, one he had not recognised straight away. The feeling of sitting in Dr Lecter’s office, talking in circles. It was the feeling of burning his lips on ortolan, head uncovered.

Perhaps this was where he and Hannibal belonged; in the unspoken, in the wanting.

*

It was July. They drifted. Will swam early in the morning before the heat became too oppressive. Hannibal brought him breakfast afterwards, and stayed to eat with him. Will felt the sun on his face and the burst of fruit juice in his mouth and the scent of coffee in his nose. In the late morning he worked on the upstairs of the house. It was time for whitewash on the walls, and he liked the new-home smell of paint and the repetitive ache in his arms. Hannibal offered to help, and Will snorted at the image of him speckled with paint and told him to get on with whatever he was doing in the kitchen.

Will was looking forward to moving upstairs. He liked the idea of his and Hannibal’s presence expanding to fill the house. Hannibal went out early one morning and came back with curtains for the upstairs windows, which he left silently for Will to put up. He’d gone classic with the colours; rusty ochre, forest green, chalky terracotta. They were made of a smooth, heavy fabric that hung beautifully right to the floor. Will had not even realised he’d measured.

Other things appeared too, some of which Hannibal would have been able to get in town and others he must have sent away for. Possibly from a catalogue, Will thought, tickled, as he examined a bedside lamp with a burnished gold shade.

Will fixed the little table he had found, and put it in the master bedroom. He mentioned to Hannibal that he’d found a couple of planks he was thinking of using for shelves, and the next time Hannibal went into town he brought back brackets. Will cleaned out the wardrobe and polished it. It was satisfying to imagine Hannibal’s clothes hanging here. Hannibal’s water glass on the bedside table. He thought about finding another table for the other side.

*

There was a dog hanging around on the property. Hannibal spotted her first, nosing around the garden fence - a suggestion of a fence, more than anything, Will would mend it at some point. She was a mutt, slender like a lurcher, and she backed off as soon as she realised she had been seen. When Hannibal told him, Will went to fill a dish with water, and when he turned from the sink Hannibal handed him a plate of sliced chicken arranged in a fan.

Will placed the water and the chicken on a slab near the fence, and then he went indoors and resisted the urge to watch through the kitchen window. He went out for the dishes before bed, and they were empty.

Walking back to his own room, he found himself glancing at Hannibal’s door. The master bedroom upstairs would be ready soon.

The dog came closer over the next week. She would sit at the far end of the garden when Will came out with food, and would start towards it before he got inside.

Very slowly, one thing at a time, Will put the finishing touches to the master bedroom. He put up shelves and a mosquito net. He found a bedside table for the other side of the bed. He thought how Hannibal would probably want to put up pictures. For all he knew there could be a nascent collection somewhere in the house already. Maybe he was already looking for the skulls of local wildlife.

The rain continued, and so, unabated, did the heat. Will was beginning to get used to it. And he was getting used to a glass of dry, sharp white wine in the evening; thick, sweet coffee in the morning; a plate of sliced pears and translucent prosciutto appearing at his elbow just when he felt peckish in the afternoon.

He thought about what it might be like to be touched.

The dog started coming to the door each afternoon, when she knew there would be food. She’d back off when Will actually came outside, but it was progress.

The day he finished the bedroom, Will spent a rainy afternoon sitting still on the sheltered back doorstep, a piece of dried beef held loosely in his hand. The dog, soaked and huddled under a bush, wavered. She crept closer as the sun wandered through the sky, glowing faintly through the clouds. When she was only a few feet away, Will began talking to her, low and gentle. He paid little attention to what he said. It was ‘here, girl, I won’t hurt you. Here, girl, come get dry.’ He told her she had a pretty face. He held out the dried meat and saw her strain forward as she tried to decide if he was safe. Will felt safe. He was in familiar territory. A frightened creature needed him, and he knew that he could help her. Hannibal was moving quietly about the kitchen behind him. There were chopping and clinking and mixing sounds, but Hannibal did not interrupt him.

When at last the smell of the meat was too much for the dog to resist, the sun was hanging low in the sky and Will had slipped almost into a meditative state. She took the food from his hand and let him stroke her head after she had eaten it. He let her take his measure, and knew she had decided to like him when she put her paw on his knee.

"She is still hungry," Hannibal observed quietly from behind him. Will made some noise of acknowledgment, barely a _hm_. The dog peered around him at the sound of Hannibal’s voice, but didn’t seem overly concerned by him. Animals never were. "I have placed towels and soap in the bathroom for you to wash her." Will hid his smile behind his hand.

The dog, once she had decided to trust him, had no problem following him into the house or getting into the shower. She endured the unscented soap with stoicism and rested her head on his thigh as he towelled her dry.

"You have a new devotee," said Hannibal, from the doorway. He was looking with distaste at the wet floor and muddy towel.

"Jealous?" Will said, sotto voce.

Hannibal chose not to acknowledge that. “If you will come to the kitchen, I have dinner for both of you.”

At the kitchen table, Will speared spinach leaves, glistening with dressing, with his fork. The dog had been relegated to the corner with the dishes Hannibal had clearly designated as hers. Hannibal busied himself with the wine. “What do you want to call her?” Will asked him.

Hannibal glanced up, and it was extraordinary how easy he was for Will to read now. Will saw him consider and discard several responses. _She’s your dog,_ was certainly in there. But what he said was: “Persephone.”

Will snorted, inelegantly. Hannibal regarded him patiently over the rim of his glass and said, “She has come to our home and eaten our food.”

“Right,” Will said, not bothering to hide his laughter. “I hope she stays longer than six months.”

Hannibal sipped his wine impassively. The low light put his eyes in shadow. He had fine lines on his forehead and around his mouth. Will just looked at him for a moment, then reached for his own glass.

*

Persephone’s presence felt like a finishing touch to Will. She padded through the house behind him, shoving her long nose into his palm whenever he stopped. She was house-trained, and knew the basic commands. She was smart, too, would probably like it if he taught her a few tricks.

It wasn’t just the master bedroom that was finished now, the whole of the upper floor was freshly painted, the floors stripped back to the boards, curtains hung. They could start moving some of the furniture from downstairs up. Hannibal would want to buy a few pieces, or have them made. Will had a home, and a dog, and Hannibal. He stood at the window and watched Hannibal fuss with the bay tree he had potted in the corner of the courtyard, drifting for a few seconds before Persephone licked his hand to remind him to scratch behind her ears.

Will prevaricated a little, but not much. The summer was more than halfway over. The damp heat bothered him less and less. Next year he and Hannibal were going to plant crops.

*

It was a Sunday on the cusp of August. Hannibal liked to read on Sundays. It was appropriate to rest, to sit with his book and think about God, and on this particular Sunday he was doing exactly that.

Will, on the other hand, had been aimless all day. He was working through another Robert Louis Stevenson, but it wasn’t holding his attention. He kept putting it down and picking it up again, shuffling through to the kitchen for coffee and staring out at the rain while he waited for it to brew. He wandered up and down the stairs, and Hannibal could hear the slide of drawers opening and the thud of furniture being moved. Finally, at mid-afternoon, Will took Persephone out for a walk.

Hannibal watched him go, umbrella tucked under his arm, and wondered if God was pleased with Himself. The thought crossed his mind, as it did sometimes, that he could go out too. He could go to the bakery and find the brusque man who never bothered to return Hannibal’s _good morning_ s. He had a tableau in mind for him, and a recipe for spicy sausage he wanted to try.

But this was a small place. The police would call for reinforcements. Everyone in the area would be questioned. News would spread. It would all begin again.

Ah well.

Hannibal went to the kitchen. Will had seemed to be in the mood for a long walk. He would have to fill the time.

*

Will and Persephone walked until their surroundings were no longer quite familiar and Will could see the water. The beach wasn’t far, really. He would take Persephone there in the dry season. He would make Hannibal come with them. Maybe he could get Hannibal to wear shorts.

A year from now, he would know this area as well as he had known Wolf Trap. The rain spattered louder on his umbrella. The sky was looking fuller and greyer by the minute. He whistled to Persephone, and they turned back the way they came. As they walked, Will grew calmer and more certain, and knew that he was going to follow through.

*

Will slipped into the house, toeing off his boots and slipping his umbrella into the stand by the door. He went unerringly to the kitchen, where Hannibal was intently examining a joint of beef in a rich-smelling marinade.

"I want to show you something," he said, to Hannibal’s questioning eyebrow.

Hannibal nodded, covered the basin with a cloth, and followed Will as he led him up the stairs. Will’s spine prickled, having Hannibal following at his back, and Hannibal made no remark as Will opened the door of the master bedroom.

"It’s ready," Will said, by way of an explanation. He watched Hannibal’s face closely.

Hannibal took it in, smiling faintly, small but real. "I knew this room held promise," he said, and Will could tell he was already planning what he would put on the walls. He paced around, examining the paintwork, the exact straightness of the shelves, the finish on the wardrobe.

“Tonight,” said Will, and Hannibal’s eyes snapped back to him. “We could move our things in.” He met Hannibal’s eyes, looking for the precise moment his words registered.

It was as good as he’d hoped. Hannibal went completely still, eyes wide, lips parted. He was a couple of paces from Will, and he lifted his hands as if to reach for him, but stopped as if he did not dare to do it. And Will, just like that, did not want to wait anymore. He stepped in close, telegraphing his actions, giving plenty of warning. Will cupped Hannibal’s jaw with one hand and Hannibal allowed Will to draw him forward into a kiss. Will heard the breath shudder in Hannibal’s throat. Their mouths were hot where they pressed together. Will’s hand curled tight in Hannibal’s shirt collar, and he felt Hannibal jerk as if waking up, and he surged against Will, clutching at his sides, his arms, sliding a hand into his hair.

Will was awash in Hannibal’s desire, soaked to the skin with it, and he knew exactly where and who he was. He wanted to laugh, he was laughing, and Hannibal was growling against his mouth, "Will. Will, please." And Will shoved him against the nearest wall, pushing the whole length of his body against him. It was overwhelming to be so aroused, and overwhelming to feel the way Hannibal trembled against him, and the way Hannibal’s hips jerked against his own, as if he really couldn’t help it, as if he really was so desperate that all he could do was rub up against Will, like an animal. They could have finished just like that. It would have taken so little, and he wanted so much to see Hannibal’s face when Will made him come. But he wasn’t ready for it to be over yet. He grabbed Hannibal by his shirt collar and hauled him onto the bed. He loved Hannibal’s eagerness, the way he went where Will put him as if he had no choice. Will managed to keep away from him just long enough to take in the whole picture that Hannibal made; leaning back on his elbows on the sheets, mouth red, eyes hazy, gloriously rumpled all over, with his cock pushing against the front of his trousers. And then Will had to be on him again, had to nip at those lips with his teeth, had to scratch down Hannibal’s chest and feel how Hannibal’s hands tightened in his hair at the feeling. “Take these _off,”_ he mumbled, tugging at Hannibal’s belt, and he wanted to laugh delightedly at how Hannibal scrambled to obey, how awkward it was to try and remove Hannibal’s clothes when Will could not bring himself to stop touching him, not even for a second longer. The jangle of the belt buckle hitting the floor, the accompanying crumple of the trousers, the sound of a seam tearing as he tugged impatiently at Hannibal’s underwear.

He knew what Hannibal looked like naked, he’d seen everything, but on those other occasions Hannibal hadn’t been hard. He hadn’t been breathing like he’d been running, he didn’t look as wild as he had the night he’d put a knife in Will and left him to die on his kitchen floor. Will raked his fingers through the hair on Hannibal’s chest. It must have hurt Hannibal, Will pressing so hard he could feel the exact location of each of Hannibal’s ribs under the layers of skin and fat and muscle. But Hannibal always liked it when Will hurt him.

Will could hardly make up his mind where to touch. Before, he might have frozen up, or chosen something he knew his partner would like over what he wanted. But it was Hannibal. Hannibal wanted everything that Will was, and so he could have this too. What made it even better was that Hannibal only let him, only bared his throat, spread his arms and legs, only opened himself to anything Will wanted to do to him, only said, slurred, "Will."

It made everything hotter, more intense, as Will let himself know, fully and explicitly, that he could do anything to Hannibal. He was making noise too, inarticulate sounds he would not have recognised if he heard them, and that was good too, his desire was so huge and overwhelming that he could hardly form thoughts. He dragged himself up Hannibal’s body, dragging his teeth against Hannibal’s skin as he went, and kissed him on the mouth, teeth and tongue - not enough. One of Hannibal’s hands was in Will’s hair, the other guided Will’s right hand between his legs.

“I want to fuck you,” Will mumbled, half against Hannibal’s mouth, not expecting for a moment that Hannibal would do anything other than what he did; lunge up at him with hands and mouth desperate for him. At another time, in another mood, he would have forced Hannibal to say the words, to beg for it, and pretended to himself that he might refuse him. But that time and that mood had passed. There was a rush to rid themselves of the last of their clothes, a moment of fumbling with a bedside drawer, and then Will was squeezing lube onto his fingers and then pressing _in_ -

*

Hannibal’s whole being was focused solely on Will, on the hot stretch of his fingers, on the ragged sounds of his breathing interwoven with Hannibal’s own. He felt utterly possessed. His whole life had led him to this, the moment when Will looked at him hungrily and finally, finally touched him. Nothing could compare. He wanted to ask Will to kill him, then, but he could not speak.

*

Fucking Hannibal was like drowning, like burning, like the feeling of a knife sliding into his belly. Will shifted until his hips slotted right between Hannibal’s thighs and pushed in. Hannibal’s chest was heaving and his eyes were wet, and he looked at Will like he was looking at God.

Will wanted to slide his fingers in between Hannibal’s ribs and clutch at his heart. He settled for a hand heavy on Hannibal’s throat. He settled for experiencing body and mind together in unrepentant savagery, sweat and bared teeth and years of restraint. A particular thrust forced a noise from Hannibal that was not even human, so Will did it again. Someone - both of them, maybe - was shaking. Will let go of Hannibal’s throat so that he could brace himself fully against the mattress, fucking into Hannibal so hard it must be hurting him, but Hannibal only pushed back against him, taking everything and gasping for more.

They moved together until Will was only his body. He was only the motion of his own hips and the slide of sweat on his skin, his teeth at Hannibal’s throat. Hannibal’s breath beat against his ears and he couldn’t tell it from his own breath or from the beating of his own heart. Every sensation pushed him closer to a dizzying edge. Hannibal’s nails dragging across his back. Hannibal’s cock dragging across his belly. He bit down as the feeling grew stronger, and it was the taste of blood that made him come, and Hannibal came too with a wrenching cry.

They lay together, after, wrung out. The exertion echoed through Will’s muscles. With effort, he turned his head to the side. Hannibal was gazing at him. His expression was completely unguarded. Will took in the jagged line of his cheekbone, the deep wells of his eye sockets, the softness under his jaw. He wanted to say something, but everything he could think of would have felt cheap compared to the silence between them. Nothing he could say would confirm anything he didn’t already know. He could say, _you_ _’re mine,_ but it wouldn’t convey what he would mean by it. Later, they would hang clothes in the wardrobe. They would eat dinner together. Hannibal might speak of planting mint by the kitchen window. Will might think of when he could go fishing. There was time. He moved in closer to Hannibal, and somewhere in the golden stretching out of the silence, they slept.


End file.
